Old content

Many moons ago when I had not a single character that was of the highest level (at the time that was 60) and I made my rounds through Badlands and killed Elementals to farm my first mount (60% mount, I didn't even dream of an Epic landmount then) I promised myself to never do this again - to level like that by grinding.

Well, I did it once more for another char, just because for certain levels it was hard to find quests. It was really early vanilla WoW and well, we didn't know any better. Of course there were quests. But nearly all of them were leading into instances. And of course I hated grouping back then.

I have no clue how I got to 60 (my Tauren hunter) - I do know that I dinged in Silithus, before there was Ahn'Qirai or Cenarion Hold, there were only some NPCs with one lousy questline (who are still standing at the entrance to the zone). There wasn't much to do at 60. You weren't getting extra gold for quests, so why bother? I only grinded reputation after AQ opened in Silithus for some new designs for leatherworking or running Scholomance for people who wanted their epic cloak crafted. I know I bought the design for a lot of gold from the auction house and it got me into a lot of groups for Scholo. :)

And then I leveled my Priest and got into the whole healing thing. I abandoned my hunter and really got into a different kind of game. Molten Core was the thing. I spent months in there. Zul'Gurub was next, and even a short but painful visit to Blackwing Lair. I learned a lot about aggro in there and about getting the last bit out of the gear. Then did my priest epic quest, Benediction/Anathema were nice companions deep into the Burning Crusade.

Burning Crusade changed a lot of the game for me. It was simply painful for a Priest to heal heroics. Being one-hitted by trash mobs was not fun. Being always the one to run back all the way through an instance for the x-th time - no fun at all. So I leveled my druid who was stuck in her 50ties forever. Got her up and into Karazhan before I broke away from my guild and was looking for something really different.

The server I played on was (and is) a nightmare for Horde. It is very much an Alliance server and grouping is hell. So I went to look for a different server. And started from scratch. Repeated everything again, including the breaking away from a guild that had occupied my gaming time for most of the time on that server.
The game changed again, it's now capped at 80 levels. It's not hard to level from 1 to 60 anymore. It has become pretty much a joke compared to vanilla WoW. But isn't that something to be glad about?

The old content is still there, you can still roam around Eastern Plaguelands if that is your thing. You can still get frustrated by grinding Argent Dawn reputation - but you can do it in so much less time. Just the focus has shifted. Nowadays you will grind Argent Dawn rep for a title, not for a being able to enchant manareg on bracers or get cheap entry to Naxxramas (40).

Old content is not dead only because people are more interested in raiding Ulduar. Old content is still there and people still play it. I will go back to old content on my Deathknight, he has a lot of things to do. I really want to do that for him. And WoW Wiki is a great source for people who don't know what the Timbermaw are... or do you know who the Shen'dralar were and what you could get there? Yes, enchants for your legs... before leatherworking fixed that.

Bad timing.

So, I had a very mean argument going on the guild forums and then -- two of who are always the loudest pests there were kicked out of the guild -- apparently this happened during the night and of course they are furious.

They started bashing on me (in a thread that I wrote about two weeks ago) yesterday afternoon. And they of course went on to bash on me the whole day today. As if I were the reason they were kicked. Yeah, yay me. I cannot go online without hateful whispers and I should start putting people on ignore. But somehow I understand the hate, and I do understand the bashing.

But with every whisper I really hate the officers and the guild leader, it should go to them but they are not online, they are offline celebrating Easter away from their computers. I was looking forward to farm a bit on my Shaman and doing some heroics on my druid. But I cannot stay online for long without being ridiculed or hated at. It really pisses me off.
Last thing I read on the forums was that they want me out, almost all of them. And no response from anyone.
The guildleader came by and posted something but they dismissed it as worthless and he told me in chat "yeah, you'll probably get all the hate now :) ." that smiley at the end just so killed me, I felt tears start to fall. And went offline. That's all he said. Yeah, thanks a lot.

Probably everyone in officer chat on the forums is laughing their ass off, yeah she didn't saw that one coming.

So I'll probably leave the guild this night and will put everyone in the guild on ignore. A long list.

I thought about deleting my Shaman and my druid and to start from scratch. Without nobody knowing my new chars. But I think when I do that I won't come back. Ever.

Thoughts of leaving

I wonder what I will do if certain people might quit the guild... yesterday night I kept thinking of "time for a new guild" - maybe it is time for our own guild?
Todeshauch is so far away from where it was when I first joined, so much is different.

*sigh*

I even started thinking about names... but I doubt it would be something that we really could pull off. Although I like the concept of a really small guild with skilled players, could be fun - as long as we wouldn't argue about loot or other stuff, like who is getting that raid spot and so on.

I really think Todeshauch has become unmanageable. So where do I go from here?
(and yes, I just thought about "Buffy") But it is a good question.

Not in the mood

My druid on Todeskrallen is 73. And I just cannot bring myself to level her further. This is a bit of dejavu, the other druid (on Dun Morogh) had the same problem at the very same level.

Currently she is in Grizzly Hills, I didn't want to stay in Dragonblight. Still everything seems to be getting on my nerves. Motivation is low at the moment to level another char and I seem to only play my warrior or priest.

It just seems so pointless to level her at all, I could as well just transfer the lvl 80 druid over from Dun Morogh.
What the hell keeps me from doing that? I will certainly not log onto one of my older chars (may they rest in peace) but still I keep wondering if I won't ever need her again there. Even though I know I could never be happy on Dun Morogh again - why do I keep looking back there?

I do chat with someone there once in a while but that will end soon, I guess. We simply have nothing in common anymore. So as I fade away from my old Server - the game itself is getting boring again. A little bit anyway, I still have much to do. But for the fun stuff you'll again need raids and DKP. Healing has been frustrating again and even though dual spec is on the horizon, I doubt I will be getting it if you have to pay 1000 gold for it. I'd rather not heal at all and stay Enhancer. This way I won't need the dual spec in the first place. But on the other hand, there is the time I spent getting the healer items - would'nt it be a waste that way?

I dearly hope Blizz rethinks the price for Dual Spec. Shouldn't it be helping to get the gold-load off Healers/Tanks? Why make us pay another fine?

Grml.

And then she imploded...

I've never thought of people in villain categories. But as of yesterday evening I found someone who could be discribed as my "Arch Nemesis".
He also plays a Shaman, as a healer mainly and thinks he is the king of Shamans, the only one who has had something like an epiphany on Shaman healing and gear. This extends also to other classes. He bickers about everything that he sees and dislikes, for whatever reason.

And he is in my face all the time when he is on his Shaman and his other characters. "Yeah I thought about getting that ring, but I think xyz is far better (insert link to BT/Hyjal/SSC loot here)."

As if I don't know that. But I cannot make bosses drop the things they do. Yesterday Maiden didn't drop the mace nor the totem. Yay me.
Well, he mostly kept to the other guys in the group yesterday when he was on his hunter. There were only random snide remarks in my direction and I thought he was really making an effort not to critisise me too much.
But before Prince, the other healer had to leave. So Mr. King-Shaman logged onto, yes, his Shaman and one of the first things he said (because there was still a DD missing) was that I could go and respecc to Enhance because he could easily heal the MT alone. WTF?
We were going to do Netherspite... and luckily for the group I did not respecc because Mr. Supershaman had a disconnect shortly after the pull.
I really had a hard time keeping people alive, but I think it was not bad that only one died. But I was becoming really pissed off with him, I knew I was going to blow up eventually. If he made just one more snide remark about anything.

I should have muted my microphone...
After we wiped on the Prince, and the boss came to me (I was the last one alive) he said something like: "Why did he come to you just now? what kind of aggro do you do? Did you even put points in the talent?"

I simply lost it. The asshole... first of all, get bent. And second of all, what the hell did you take that made your brain shrivel and say such utter bullshit?
And there were just too many things throughout the whole raid yesterday - I could not stop myself from asking why the hell he was in my face all the time. Then he wanted to whisper something to someone and instead whispered it to me, and I tried to reply that he had mistakenly whispered me only to get in red. 'xxx is ignoring you.'

So I said it on TeamSpeak, that he had whispered it to me. And couldn't refrain from saying that I will make it easy for him that he does not make this mistake again and put him on ignore as well.

I went to Shatt and off. And the first thing I will do, when I log on, is respecc to Enhancement and go farm gold for the expansion. I doubt I go back to healing before I hit 80.

If I do that and not stop playing altogether. Such people are the worst ever. And I won't spend my time listening to his bullshit ever again.
Period.

On the finishing line...

Wrath of the Lich King will come out on November 13th. That has made me think what I will do with the time leading up to it, and beyond.
Mondsucht said that he is afraid about my WoW future, and he may be right in light of playing on Dun Morogh. Last week I was sure enough that Dun Morogh had me back, at least partly, but seeing that there is little that I can accomplish alone - I have no intention on staying.

I waited over two hours on Sunday for someone who did not show up. I have waited enough, I have asked people enough only to be told that they don't want random groups, that they didn't know it was serious that I wanted to do the bloody quest. I've had enough of going nowhere.

I went to Zul'Aman yesterday, we killed Janalai, the shield dropped and there was no question that it was mine. Even though there was a paladin present who should have rolled on it too. He'll deny that probably, but anyway. I felt good, I didn't mute my microphone which I have not done in months. It felt good, even though I was tired. And after that we went to BRD to do the "Save Brewfest!" eventboss - something I've been trying to get a group for with my druid on Dun Morogh for hours on Sunday.

Just like that.

And even though I'm not over the chars I leave behind (I may transfer one or two later) I may as well be over the people on Dun Morogh. Even if they are nice, or in one case seemed to be nice... there's an end to everything.

... count down to WOTLK commencing...

Annoyed

I haven't posted here in a long time, and much has happened since.
Pokayoke is of course 70 by now and has gone through being a healer, being enhancer and back to healer again.

Being Enhance Shaman was fun, was a few times in Karazhan, got some nice loot and got nice weapons and some good gear now. But now that I have grinded some of the reputation, have done dailies, went fishing - have maxed out the professions, now it is time to go back to healing.

In the meantime, Duh got his mage to 70, and has left the server again because, well, I have no clue what he wanted anyway- I think he has neither. So he went back to my old server and is raiding once more, and I'll stay with Pokayoke and get my healgear going. Only bad thing is, nobody needs a healer - during my vacation I only managed to run one lousy instance in 4 days and I was in the goddamn LFG channel the whole time.

So, for lack of a damage dealer I am currently leveling a Bloodelf hunter, he is going to be 30 the coming week-end and it is fun to actually level a hunter once more. So I will have a farmbot in no time.

Healing with a Shaman is also fun, so I'll keep the spec, even though it is difficult to get into non-heroic groups. If I can run Karazhan a few times more, I will be able to heal heroics, I hope that I won't disappoint. But Chain Heal is heaven, I tell you.

As long as my guild keeps supporting her, I'm going to be fine.
On my old server, some people have come back from playing AoC, but still nothing really pulls me back there. My old guild there is broken into different groups, there's no real sense of togetherness anymore. And I need that, I know that Duh for example doesn't care in which guild he is as long as he can do something that "gets him somewhere" and there are many people alike. But I need a sense that you can also count on people to help out others with no own agenda. But that is lacking there completely. So I'm fine with the guild I found with Pokayoke, even though we have ups and downs as well, but nothing is more depressing than when you are online or in a raid with your guild and nobody is talking...

Like in Karazhan on Sunday - which was the last run I organized- I'm done pleading with people to come and help out in Karazhan anymore. I know that raiding with the partner guild is much much more important than help gearing people of your own guild who can't go there.

Yes, that was meant sarcastic. I'm pretty much annoyed with them all, and need a break from seeing my old guild break into pieces...

Ramparts Rampage

Pokayoke went to Ramparts last night to heal her first 5-man instance, ever. Two druids (one bear and a Boomkin), a Warlock and two Shamans (me and an Enhancer).

First pull, the bear didn't see that the second mob ran straight to me and I guess saw nothing but his big butt... so while I was off-tanking the add and healing I thought that this will be interesting and 'can I have my Fade button please?'.

So the bear was new to tanking, and I was new to healing with a Shaman.
We did wipe twice during the whole run, once on a 6-man group and then on the final boss.

It wasn't too bad, I had worse groups in there. The bad thing was that at the end, healer pants dropped and the Moonkin won the roll. WTF?
One more on my ignore-list. He was getting on my nerves about my specc and I actually was at the point where I just wanted to say that he should go over to elitistjerks.com and have a look at the post about Restoration Shamans and that he could actually learn something there.

I didn't even say anything about the warlock having his voidwalker out all the time and giving us no healthstone even after I asked for one... maybe a voidwalker was just his thing, who knows?

Usual random group, not very rewarding, but at least I learned something about healing with her and got a bit of XP.

Shaman builds and leveling

I have been trying to figure out how to level Pokayoke to 70.
She is now Elemental and still in the transition phase gear-wise from Enhancement to Spell-gear. I don't have leatherworking, so getting gear is limited to quests. I've been taking the mail/leather and all the stuff with spelldamage on it. But it's a bit less powerfull still than the kind of damage I did as Enhancement.

Still, I won't go back to that, I have been thinking about a healing specc instead. I don't do that much damage anyway, so I've been getting used to long fights and a bit of a frustrating questspeed.

But really, what's the rush? I have all the time in the world and leveling on a PvP server is harder anyway. The interruptions from getting killed by random 70ish-level-players who farm there or do the dailies, is enough of a hold-up. Why not take the chance to do the instances for reputation? They always look for healers. And even if I don't have any healgear at the moment, should be fun to start healing. I could go back to Elemental if I can't kill anything with that specc.

I'm thinking about it.

Linkage:

• elitist jerks: shaman restoration


• a Shaman leveling healing specc


• Pokayoke in the Armory

Ding! 60! Poka!

Small Ding! for my Shaman, she reached level 60 yesterday. ;) Having gotten through the dreaded 50-span she now quests in Outland has a ton of fun there. Even though now I really get to know the PvP aspect of the server (*hugs* to my guild to come and rescue me) - but still fun.

Taking a big break from raiding, different reasons. I'm just fed up with everything that's all.

Sunwell, Poka and stuff that bugs me

Since I last posted here, Sergej dinged 70, Moonseed went from Feral to Tree to Feral again - and Brazer is back to being a tank. Sunwell and patch 2.4 has hit the realms and people are doing dailies like crazy. I try to limit my efforts to do the Nagrand and the attack-plan ones, they are fairly simple and when I'm in the mood and have Ryo with me I can be swayed to go to the island and do some more.

Ziral is friendly with Sunwell Offensive, Brazer will be Exalted some day I hope. The Jewelcrafting recipes are just too good to let them just go. But there are too many people doing the dailies right now to actually have fun.

I will wait some more and in the meantime try to bring my Shaman Pokayoke to Outland on the other server. She dinged 55 yesterday, so only 3 more levels to go... I've been trying to stay off Dun Morogh, it's nothing more than grief to feel as if I'm left behind again, and the best part was last night I was logging on and Duh was actually in an Arena. I had been trying to get him there for months, but he said it was just something that he didn't like trying. It felt odd, to fall for the same bullshit again -- so I disbanded our unused 2v2 team and left to go play my Shaman again.

Ryo asked me not to let him chase me off the server and just ignore him altogether, but then I come to thinking on how things do change between people and how things always repeat themselves. I've been there with another mage before who droped me just as easily. As long as you are of some use to them, they tolerate you (I can't put it differently, it's not personal, it's just that one is useful at the time) and if they find new people who are much more useful to them (or are online earlier than you are) you are just watching them do all the stuff you planned on doing, from the sidelines.

That is a bit bitter. So I will stick to do things in this game with people I know, who actually call me to ask if I wanna come play with them, not chasing people around and asking them to do things they don't care about with people they don't care about. Time is just too precious, and yes, this is only a game. But time consuming nonetheless, so you should spend that time with people who actually have fun doing stuff with you, not pretending to have fun just so they can get more badges...

On another note, Ryo and I have started the "FRF" (Fun Raid Friday) - we were in Zul'Gurub and last Friday it was AQ20, next up is Molten Core this Friday, so I'm looking forward to seeing some old instances again.

Need a break from the new stuff and from people who do things only if it gets them somewhere (whereever that is really) and concentrate on things I want to do. And if that is not playing, I'll do just that and if that is having fun in ancient instances, then I'll do just that.

Shockadin build

With this build I will level Crucis, I think. It seems to have a ll the advantages of healing (so I can always go to instances while I level and heal quite nicely) and that of a solid DPS.

I did level Brazer all Retribution and it got boring soon. So I hope this is better.
Currently there is an article about this line of specc on WOW Insider and although the build in the article seems to be not the best, I found the specc above in the comments and I agree with most of them. This build is based on Holy damage, not on weapon damage. While your Seals deal more damage with a slow 2h weapon that has a big max-damage, it still is better to push all "+damage" talents, not the ones with 'only' weapon damage.

Well, I'll run with this and see how it works out. She's 16 right now, so a long journey ahead.

New Main, new world.

"The decision's mine and mine alone. And... it's made." - John Sheridan, Messages from Earth

I left my old server Dun Morogh behind and have been playing my Shaman on Die Todeskrallen. I've only been back for two or three nights for PvP on my lvl 69 Druid there, to get all the tokens for the Season 1 gear for her. Now I would only need the honor, but I think I will leave that for now. First I would have to get her to 70, which is only half a level away... but leaving DM is a good thing and I won't be back so much. Maybe only for the people I will miss a bit...

Now onto my little Shaman who will hit 40 shortly, I hope. Even though it is a PvP server and I'm currently struggling through Badlands and some members of the Alliance seem to be hunting me down more than the mobs there - it has been fun so far. PvP on my druid has made me stop being afraid of areas like Stranglethorn, or Hillsbrad. Alliance are only getting on my nerves if for instance a lvl 70 hunter (t5 equipped) decides to gank me at 4am. These things happen and you know, players who need to have accents in their names because the name "Morphine" was taken already... well. But I'm not bitter, no way... ;)

Playing a Shaman is something new to me, too. Totems, totems, totems and *bäm* Frostshock and *bäm* Windfury! I can recommend the addon Numen to any Shaman out there, my action bars would be littered by totem spells without it.
Pokayoke is my new main now, and as a main has joined a guild as well. "Numquam Retro" is a nice bunch of players who know each other and a mix of totally new ones.
I've been keeping a low profile and trying to avoid doing the webpage. Right now I have other things on my mind. Well, I'll let them do their own thing. Maybe I could make a header. Well... no no no. No time. No ideas at all.

How long do you think I'll need to get to 70?